Urban Trees Grow Fast and Die Young (cosmosmagazine.com) 87
Trees in urban streets grow more quickly but die faster than those in rural forests, resulting in a net loss of carbon storage from city planting initiatives, new research shows. From a report: Researchers led by Ian Smith of Boston University, US, found that street trees in Boston grow nearly four times faster than those in forest stands nearby in rural Massachusetts. However, mortality rates of street trees are more than double those in rural forests, with young and very large trees most at risk. The findings have implications for urban greening programs, suggesting that planting initiatives alone are insufficient to meet municipal carbon storage, canopy cover and biomass goals. Many cities are embracing greening initiatives to improve urban sustainability and reduce the environmental impacts of urbanisation, the researchers write. "However, cities have been dramatically understudied by ecologists," they add. "Despite the widely espoused benefits of urban trees, the role of urban vegetation in the carbon cycle remains uncertain." Street trees take many years to pay their way on carbon costs.
quality of life (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we stop measuring EVERYTHING in terms of how much carbon dioxide it produces or consumes. Having trees in a city make it a more pleasant living experience on its own. Also it often improves property values. Not everything needs to be justified in terms of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Re:quality of life (Score:5, Funny)
> Having trees in a city make it a more pleasant living experience on its own.
Well, as long as they're not Bradford Pear trees I suppose...
=Smidge=
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There's no way urban trees are carbon sinks. They are grown in tree farms, shipped to the city, and their roots destroy the surrounding concrete.
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Groups of trees would probably be better than those soldiered along between roads and sidewalks.
Re:quality of life (Score:4, Interesting)
Can we stop measuring EVERYTHING in terms of how much carbon dioxide it produces or consumes.
Measuring it in terms of CO2 relates it to AGW and makes it easier to get funding.
Study to measure how urban trees affect global warming? Funded.
Study to measure how urban trees make you happy? Funding harder.
A lot of scientists' work lives revolve around getting funding, so if you want to study trees in an urban environment, relating it to global warming makes it easier.
Bullshit conclusion by bullshit article anyway... (Score:5, Informative)
Street trees take many years to pay their way on carbon costs.
You know... to payback for all those years trees spend flying around the globe on jets while burning plastic for fun.
Cause trees are assholes I guess.
Trees are a fucking carbon sink from seed forward.
They are made out of fucking carbon sucked from the air - that's why we can use them as fuel. All that carbon in them.
Which they are NOT getting through their root system but through their leaves.
So where does that "trees can't ever pay their way" bullshit come from? Well... this bit in the study:
The carbon costs associated with nursery production, planting, irrigation, pruning, removal, and disposal are high [16]. Street trees must survive for several decades (26-33 years; [27]) to attain carbon neutrality.
Oh really?
Well then... let's see those studies.
16. Kendall A, McPherson EG. A life cycle greenhouse gas inventory of a tree production system. Int K Life Cycle Assess. 2012;17:444-452. [fs.fed.us]
One of California's largest tree nurseries was estimated to release 10,837 tons CO2e in 2009, or 4.6 and 15.3 kg for a typical #5 and #9 tree, respectively.
This amount is relatively small compared with average annual CO2 uptake rates by established trees that ranged from 39 to 96 kg.
Study didn't measure the CO2 sequestered by the trees as they grew to be "a typical #5 and #9 tree, respectively."
Also, numbers listed are for "ornamental trees". Which is something never defined in the study, but the nursery used to gather the data [monrovia.com] offers everything from figs to you average pine.
Needless to say, that "per tree" average may be more than a little off.
Which is why they report numbers "more than 100 times higher than... seedling production for forestry operations".
Production emissions for trees used in urban forestry are 4.6 and 15.3 kg for a typical #5 and #9 tree, respectively. These emissions are more than 100 times higher than those associated with seedling production for forestry operations, estimated at 0.029-0.133 kg per seedling (CORRIM Inc. 2004; Aldentun 2002). This result is not entirely surprising because ornamental trees used in urban forestry remain in the nursery much longer, on the order of 4 to 5 years.
I.e. Even with numbers skewed by a lousy methodology and poorly defined sample - trees still suck up way more carbon than is used in their production.
But what about that second study, the one claiming it takes decades for a tree to reclaim the CO2, actively rebutting the study above?
Well... Cherry trees are trees too. And should you take a cherry picker to your local cherry tree you can pick any shit you feel like picking.
27. Petri AC, Koeser AK, Lovell ST, Ingram D. How Green Are Trees?â"Using Life Cycle Assessment Methods to Asses Net Environmental Benefits. J Environ Hort. 2016;34(4):101â"110. [hrijournal.org]
In a cradle-to-gate analysis, container nursery production of a #5 (nominally a 19-L or 5-gal) tree was found to be a net greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter, with an estimate of 4.6 kg (10.1 lb) of CO2e (Kendall and McPherson, 2012).
Do note how it cites the study above as if it proves trees to be net polluters. Completely ignoring the very next line in the study.
Naah man... trees... they like... pollute the air man.
Similarly, study simply rounds up numbers to whatever is available. Thus it assumes that a 5-gallon tree weighs 136 kilograms and that every single tree is delivered one at a time.
A delivery weight of 136 kg (300 lb) per tree was used to establish the ton-km for a SimaPro (Simapro, PRé North America, Inc.
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There is a great comic that has a professor talking about global warning and someone says from the crowd "But what if we try to fix it an we're wrong and all we do is m
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So fake trees are OK? :P
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If only people recognized the difference between fiction and reality...
Many Americans watched the Deathwish and Dirty Harry movies, and thought that they actually portrayed what is happening in America
They voted for 'tough on crime' republican politicians who implemented extremely long sentences to solve a problem that did not exist
Now, we have tens of thousands of people who have been warehoused for decades, in many instances for non-violent crimes and are faced with either the incredibly high cost of cont
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Man-made additional release CO2 is a fact.
That CO2 blocks IR radiation from the surface of the planet out to space is also a fact (releases it again yes but not necessarily towards space.)
That carbonic acid make the sea lower pH interfering with animals with calcium as their outside is also a fact AFAIK.
So man-made climate impact is a fact. Which leaves the question if the climate is changing and that it seem to do so then it kinda would follow that man-made climate change actually is a fact too.
But then th
California (Score:5, Interesting)
San Fernando Valley trees were abandoned by the cities who cited drought as the reason they stopped watering. Even though all city land is watered with reclaimed water not suitable for drinking. This led to all the trees and vegetation dying. Which the city then dutifully dug up and replaced with new greenery and trees. Which they then didnt water. Etc.
It seems the money to buy plants comes from s different bucket than the money to maintain them.
Re: California (Score:5, Informative)
Important that the trees are not maintained (Score:2)
I suppose that if the trees were kept alive you would soon run out of space to plant new trees from the tree bank.
So it is important that the newly planted trees die pretty quickly.
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Personally I'd expect competition for light to be harder in the forest and would rather see more sun light and CO2 as possible reasons for faster growth.
Re:Reaching for sun (Score:5, Funny)
The oaks are just too greedy and they grab up all the light!
Really kind of stupid. (Score:1)
Older trees produce less oxygen and absorb less carbon dioxide than younger trees.
So if trees die faster the average age of trees goes down and their oxygen producing and carbon sequestration are greater.
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Focused like a CO2 laser?
Simple (Score:1)
Plant more trees, not just Urban areas but everywhere we can.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: Simple (Score:3)
And then we'll see a monoculture of urban trees, every single one of them the same species.
It won't be a monoculture of one species; it'll be a monoculture of clones from the same individual tree, which is even worse.
Or you could just be happy with trees (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're not a religious environmentalist, your urban trees don't have to pass tests for climate virtue. You can just enjoy having them for their appearance and for the shade they cast.
Consider just enjoying things that make life better, like neighborhood trees, instead of worrying about passing someone's purity test.
Re:Or you could just be happy with trees (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is good news, no? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't try to compost them - that just releases the carbon back into the atmosphere.
Most large-scale composting is anaerobic, meaning the bacteria and microorganisms that live on the rotting vegetable matter do not use oxygen or release much carbon dioxide as part of their metabolism. That's where you throw everything in a big pile and let it rot, which is how most municipal composting programs are done (think giant piles of leaves or leaf bags.) Aerobic composting is much faster but more difficult as you have to turn everything frequently.
Some CO2 does escape, and some methane is produced
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Some CO2 does escape, and some methane is produced, but the majority of it is kept in the decayed vegetable matter.
Bury it for long enough with enough pressure and heat and future generations millions of years from now will have a convenient energy source. It's kind of a polluter though.
All of the fossil fuels that we have now are really just million year old compost heaps. If the process didn't work the way you describe, we wouldn't have this problem to begin with, but we'd probably have something else to take its place.
I think that in the future we'll actively start growing certain types of plants with the inten
New bacteria since the Carboniferous (Score:2)
My understanding is that our fossil fuels were created before bacteria figured out how to eat the lignin in the then thick bark of dead trees. It is rather chewy stuff.
Now trees just rot pretty much wherever you put them.
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I don't know but I'd be curious if faster growing/dying also due to:
1. More sunlight availability
2. Improper care by the city
3. Fertilization
4. Species picked (Can't find it in the article that compares apples to apples, err apple trees to apple trees)
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They probably grow faster cause higher CO2 ppm, regular watering and more direct sun onto each individual tree.
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My first thought was to make something with them. If they're growing 4x faster, and are yielding a useful material, that's a huge gain, and you might find companies willing to harvest/replant.
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"since the urban trees grow 4x faster (probably due to the regular watering),"
My hunch is that they grow faster because of less competition for light from neighboring trees. A solitary tree grows in a verdy different shape (ball-like) than a forest tree (most leaves near the top).
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Yes, and it also sequesters all of the other nutrients which a tree contains.
So I guess they're telling us that (Score:2)
it isn't easy being green.
I mean with all the street tree gangs fighting it out for sunlight, territory and providing local shade.
The Oaks and the Maples are still under Homeland Security investigation regarding their actions against the Palms and the Dogwoods. /s
more is less (Score:1)
Doesn't make sense? (Score:3)
Let's look at these two statements:
trees in Boston grow nearly four times faster than those in forest stands nearby in rural Massachusetts
Seems legit. Ok, then this:
suggesting that planting initiatives alone are insufficient to meet municipal carbon storage
Right. Stay with me. Now.. if the trees grow four times faster, sucking that much more CO2 out of the atmo at a faster pace......... see reality breaking suddenly?
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Actually, recent research into jet fuel biomass shows that you can get lots from planting young trees as hedges between farm plots, cutting them down to the trunk every 2-3 years, and the resulting spinnies of young growth makes excellent biomass to generate jet fuel out of.
(source: UW and WSU biofuel and agricultural research)
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So, only the wood die young??? (Score:2)
Or in other words, life's a Beech, and then you die....
Sequesteration by trees is a crock. (Score:3)
Seems to me that carbon sequesteration by trees, especially in an urban environment, is a crock.
Urban tree material, leaf, root and branch, isn't going to be buried for geologic time. Fallen leaves or needles will be into the soil and back in circulation annually. Wood will be cut down and/or dug up and disposed of once the tree is trimmed, dies, or in the next cycle of urban prettification. What percentage of that is going into geologic strata? What percentage is trapped in the soil, and for how long?
So most of the carbon is just out of circulation for periods of months, a year, or perhaps some decades, then gets back into the carbon cycle, which means back into the atmosphere. For the multiple century timescales of the global warming flap, you only get to count the tiny fraction that ends up actually removed from the game, not the vast bulk that just takes a short vacation.
(If you keep replacing the trees as fast as they die, so your project increased the biomass of living trees, and urban planners maintain that increase at least until the fall of urban civilization, you do get to count the increase, but only once.)
Not only that, but most of the carbon that returns to the atmosphere by anaerobic decay below the water table does so, not as carbon dioxide, but as methane. Those molecules hang around for an average of about twelve years before oxidizing to carbon dioxide and water. But for those twelve years that carbon is about 86 times as effective [scientificamerican.com] a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. So the tree has to trap that carbon for something over a THOUSAND YEARS to reach break-even.
How much of the carbon ends up burned back to CO2 on disposal? How much rots back to CO2 above the water table (and how long does that take?). What tiny fraction ends up sealed under rock for millenia?
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No. Take a walk in an old growth forest with a shovel and see how quickly you can dig through the biologic layer.
Trees (Score:2)
Urban trees are poorer (Score:5, Insightful)
Urban trees are poorer. They often pay higher taxes and rent as well as make little income. Also, due to poor social infrastructure, these trees often succumb to alcoholism and drug abuse at an early age. All of this factor conspire to prematurely age the tree and shorten its life expectancy.
They also wear strange clothes and have loud music (Score:3)
I can't tell you how irritating these urban trees are. They live fast, die young, drop branches on dogs peeing on them, wear strange clothes like light strings and alligator skins, and have loud music.
Why can't they behave?
A meaningless study (Score:2)
... and leave a good looking copse (Score:1)